This section will contain a variety of quotes and potpourri which are, with few exceptions, not large enough for a full Web Page. All are pertinent to the Combined Action Platoon program. I welcome any input or additional quotes applicable to this page.

Perhaps the most telling feature of that policy [...conventional main-force battalions
operating in free-fire zones to search out and destroy the enemy's formations], as well as
an indicator of its ultimate failure, was contained in a statement to reporters in 1965 by
the personification of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, General William. C. Westmoreland.
He said that as a result of U.S. strategy, the Vietnamese peasant would be confronted with
three choices: He could stay close to his land (usually in a free-fire zone); he could
join the Viet Cong (the target in that free-fire zone); or he could move to an area under
South Vietnamese government control and become a refugee.

"Doesn't that give the villager only the choice of becoming a refugee?" one
journalist inquired. "I expect a tremendous increase in the number of refugees,"
Westmoreland answered.

In effect, Westmoreland had declared war against peasant society in Vietnam. In my own
opinion, that is the day the United States irretrievably lost that war.

Editor's Note: In support of Michael Peterson's opinion, we posted a letter from Lt.
Col. W.R. Corson, indexed on the CAP Web Site home page, in which he said, "It can be
used to prove that our use of the CAP concept, beginning in 1966, was doomed to ultimate failure
because it was at least two years too late."

Page 35

Other, more qualitative indicators [of success] were available. In one instance, 2,800
Vietnamese refugees moved into Phuoc Trach, a hamlet near Da Nang, when a CAC was
established there. The refugees indicated that they considered it the safest place in the
area.....And residents of Ky Bich village, near Chu Lai, began sleeping in their homes at
night after a CAP was established there. Until then, they had been forced to move to a
safer location three miles away each night in order to avoid VC harassment.

Just For Laughs: Page 45

The CAP Marines' cultural and language ignorance was not without its more humorous
side. Probably the best example is found in the problems the Marines faced in the use of
the acronym for the Combined Action Companies, "CAC", which the Program had
adopted in 1966. Perhaps the most tasteful explanation of the "CAC" problem is
given by Allnutt:

"CAC was later changed to CACO when it was discovered that 'cac', if pronounced
with a broad 'a', has a rather unfortunate meaning in Vietnamese; the same, incidentally,
as it has in English&quot,

What made matters even worse was that the Program's CAC emblem had emblazoned on it the
motto, "Suc Manh", meaning "strength." Thus, the problem was even more
aggravated when the observation could be made that the Program, translated into
Vietnamese, could be implied to mean "strong cac."

In his memoir of the Vietnam War, Gen. Lewis Walt, Commander of the US Marine forces in
Vietnam from May, 1965, to May, 1967, summed up what he believed to be the key to how to
fight the war.

The struggle was in the rice paddies....in and among the people, not passing
through, but living among them, night and day...and joining with them in steps toward a
better life long overdue....

...in the end, the CAP program achieved only limited application. The eventual 114
platoons were scattered and frequently isolated. PF weapons and pay were little improved.
Expanded NVA activities along the DMZ drew Marine forces out of the villages, and by the
first months of 1967 the CAPs came to be considered, as CIA officer Douglas Blaufarb later
wrote, "...a limited sideshow to the Main-Force war". With the decline of CAPs,
Marine Corps pacificaton efforts ceased to attract the priority they enjoyed in the early
years of the war.

The Marines who serve in CAPS are not supermen. However, they are volunteers with at
least four months combat experience in a line Marine organization, a high recommendation
by their commanding officer for duty with CAP, no recorded disciplinary action, and most
importantly, no manifestation of xenophobia. The final factor is very important in the Other
War because the actions of a "gook hater" can result in the loss of
an entire hamlet to the Vietcong.

The Village is a superb case history of the kind of tactics which,
if used on a wider scale, could have made a vast difference in the war for the
countryside....They were too scattered and isolated to have maximum impact....

The combat record, the "kill ratios", and the fact that American soldiers
were living and fighting in intimate contact with Vietnamese, all suggested an interesting
phenomenon...but, despite this interest and its achievements, the program was kept
small...

What would have happened if the Army had also adopted the experiment, and if it were
given a priority call on manpower up to, but not beyond, the point where the combat
divisions could no longer shield the CAP areas from heavy-unit attacks? All that remains a
matter of speculation. It would certainly have been a different war.

From 1967-1971, RFs [Regional Forces] and PFs [Popular Forces] accounted for more than
1/2 of the Vietnamese casualties....

(NOTE: We have included that statistics because the "PFs" were the
Vietnamese troops who shared the battlefield with the CAP Marines.)
USMC Small Wars Manual, I-10, Pge. 18:

A force Commander who gains his objective in a small war without firing a shot has
attained far greater success than the one who resorted to the use of arms.

USMC Small Wars Manual, I-6, Pge. 31-32:

In small wars...the goal is to obtain decisive results with the least application of
force and the consequent minimum loss of life .... tolerance, sympathy, and kindness
should be the keynote of our relationship with the mass of the population.

Editor's Note: I have not read the USMC Small Arms Manual. In this
instance I have taken advantage of Michael Peterson's research for his book
cited earlier.

From: New York Times
November 30, 1968
Page 1

The Vietcong's command issued orders today for a new offensive to "utterly
destroy" United States and South Vietnamese combat units and pacification teams.

The Hanoi radio said that the objectives of the offensive were United States and South
Vietnamese search-and-destroy units that were "destroying our villages and occupying
our areas", pacification teams working in rural areas to win peasants over to the
Saigon Government, and national, district and local government officials.

NOTE: While CAP was not specifically spelled out in this news article, the CAP Program
was an integral part of the "pacification" program.

....there is great irony in the fact that the North Vietnamese finally won by purely
conventional means...the argument presented in this book convinces us that we won the
unconventional war in that the South Vietnamese and American joint effort had largely
eliminated the Vietcong as a serious contender for power by 1972.

TET & CAPs

I have drawn heavily from Michael Peterson's Combined Action Platoons
for this list in addition to reports received from other CAP Veterans.

8Feb68: E-4, 1400 hours, NVA Regiment, 288 NVA KIA; reaction force all but one
KIA. (Note: a first person account of this is posted under "Echo 4" on the
"Unit Histories & Personal Experiences" page.

29Feb68: R-1, Chu Lai, 10 NVA KIA.

29Feb68: H-8, Marines called in Variable-Time fused artillery on themselves.

NOTE: I received the following e-mails regarding this incident from two participants: Charles E. Brown and Cot Fox. Since I was quoting from a published source, I have opted to add their comments below.

Hi Tim

Just looked at the miscellaneous notes section of the General Articles section of the CAP website. The subsection entitled "Tet and C.A.P." contains an error --Hotel 8 was attacked on 31 January--not 29 February--and the attack was partially repelled by calling in V.T. on ourselves--in addition to going hand to hand with an estimated V,C./NVA battalion of the 804th Regiment All or us who were there that night would certainly appreciate it if you would correct the date.

Semper Fi,
Cottrell Fox (Hotel 8, June 67-31January 68)

Hi Tim:

My name is Charles E. Brown, and I go by the name of Charlie Brown. I'm a fellow veteran with Cot Fox of CAP Hotel 8 from the 1967- 68' time frame. I was with Cot when Hotel 8 was attacked. At the time I was a Corporal. I just want to confirm that Cot's recollection of the date of the attack on Hotel 8 is correct, it was January 31, 1968, the morning of the Tet Offensive and not February 29th. Cot's description of the fighting is correct. The key to our survival was that in the end we called in VT, variable time fuse, rounds on top of us, while we continued small arms fire from our bunkers on the NVA in the compound with us. Some of the Marines and a few of the Popular Forces soldiers ended up going hand to hand with some of the NVA prior to the VT rounds being called in on the compound. If I recall correctly we did several calls for "repeat" so I'm not sure how many VT rounds in total came in on top of our compound but it was a good number. Prior to the VT a lot of the fighting was very close quarters. Even after the VT rounds a good bit of small arms fire continued within and outside of the compound until after daybreak when a relief force was finally able to make its way through to us.